Movie/TV Talk - The Martian Chronicles

For my final post of this themed month, I’ll be heading back to ‘ole Ray Bradbury. In 1980, NBC aired a 3-part mini-series of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. As you can tell by that year, I didn’t see it when it aired. I did get to watch some of it back in the 90’s. I think it was on the Family Channel. I’ve heard a variety of things about it before I saw it last night. I did recognize a few folk from the miniseries. Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowell (Planet of the Apes), Bernie Casey (I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka) and Nicolas Hammond (The Amazing Spider-Man TV show) all had roles. Apparently, Ray Bradbury himself said that the miniseries was “just boring.” Whether it actually is or not, I’ll get to that below.

TV Talk - seaQuest DSV Season 1

So, I was wondering on what I could end this month with. I knew it had to be a TV show I used to watch or still watch. I almost chose Sliders, but I’ll wait on that for now. I then found a little show that I sort of used to watch back in the 90’s: seaQuest DSV aka seaQuest 2032. Since I’ve only recently finished the first season, I’ll be looking at the show by season by season. This is definitely a show I’ll have to do that with since I’ve heard things about its latter two seasons. Besides, it came on at the same time Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman came on, so I guess Sunday’s Sci-Fi is a thing here now. I guess I have to do Earth-2 next, eh?

As I said before, this was a show I didn’t watch that much. It came on at around the same time Lois and Clark came on and I was probably watching other shows as well. I do remember the show being in syndication on the Sci-Fi Channel. I think I saw a few episodes on there too. I know I saw some of the later seasons there. Anyway, I recently found it on Netflix and the rest is history.

The show takes place in the fictionalized future of 2018… so, we’ll be getting awesome submarines by that time? Earth has been colonizing the oceans, so an organization was created in order to keep order under the seas. The UEO (United Earth Oceans) Organization tasks an experimental submarine called the seaQuest to keep things in order. The Navy gets retired Captain Nathan Bridger (Roy Scheider) to command the submarine since he helped create the thing.

Throughout the season, the crew encounters a lot of stuff. They have to do deal with disputes between certain factions, perform rescue missions, and do their own exploration under the sea. They do also encounter their own brand of weirdness from time to time but it doesn’t go too overboard with it. One of the things the show tried to do was to stay as grounded as possible. It wasn’t too sci-fi… yet. That’ll be for another day. By the way, some dude by the name of Stephen Spielberg was an executive producer on the show, so this was pretty big.

Trek Novels - Star Trek: The Next Generation - Q-Squared

Since I just looked at a pretty sub-par Trek novel, I think it’s time to head back to the man known as Peter David. He probably does good Trek novels, right? I found today’s paperback novel a few years ago in a used book store in Columbia. It’s a small store but they pack a lot of books in there. I’ve gotten a few from there and I still go there sometimes to see what they have. The cover called out to me. I mean, it has Picard, Q, and the original “Flim-flam” man known as Trelane.

Q-Squared was released in 1994. I had known about Peter David as a comic writer, but I had not been introduced to his Trek writing until I read this book. As you can tell by the cover, it involves the TNG crew. I’m not sure on when this is supposed to take place. I know it has to take place after the episode “Parallels” (for some reason I want to call it “Parallax”) since the events of that episode is mentioned here. I know it doesn’t take place after the end of the show since some stuff doesn’t get mentioned. I’ll get to that later.

Star Trek: The Next Generation – Q-Squared

Writer: Peter David

BRIEF BLURB: Picard and the crew get a visit from Q and he has brought along Trelane to keep him out of trouble. Unfortunately, things go south with Trelane and the entire universe gets put in danger.

Random Pics of the Month - Favorite Vulcans

I might as well go back to Star Trek for some random pics. This time, they'll be my favorite Vulcans from the franchise. When looking back over it all, there are really only a few that I could call cool. Even when Star Trek: Enterprise had a buttload of Vulcans, only two or three were actually decent since the rest were were quite annoying. If you're wondering why Sybok isn't on here, just guess. If there is one thing I do wonder one thing: why do they all have the same haircut? Is it logical or something?

1. Spock (TOS) - No duh. He was truly the best.

2. Sarek (TOS) - It's the father of Spock. You know he has to get the next spot.

4. Tuvok (Voyager) - The brothas' have to represent. Besides, I wasn't putting that other Vulcan from the show here.

3. T'Pol (Enterprise) - Look, I'm not just putting here here because she's attractive either. It did take a while, but my likeness for her grew over the four seasons.

5. Saavik (TOS movies) - There's not much to say about here, but she was cool in the movies.

6. Soval (Enterprise) - While he did start out douchey, he did come around in the fourth season.

7. T'Pau (TOS) - I'm not talking about the 80's British group either. She was cool for an old woman.

Well, I'm out. I'll leave you something that might make you laugh.

Book Review - I, Robot

Since I wanted to broaden the spectrum of sci-fi this month, I thought I should look at a piece from some guy called Isaac Asimov. Apparently, he was some big-time writer back in the day ,and yes, I’m being a little snarky. I haven’t read much of his work but I know I have had to been exposed to some of it. I guess the best example I can come up with is the really loose adaptation of I, Robot from 2004. I was curious on how much got adapted into that movie, so I sought to find the book and read it. 

I, Robot was released in 1950. It’s a collection of short stories that Asimov had written for American magazines. Unlike The Martian Chronicles, all of the short stories were woven together to revolve around an interview with Dr. Susan Calvin, a fictional character Asimov created. Since I'm talking about the book, also browse over the movie below.

I, Robot

Writer: Isaac Asimov

BRIEF BLURB: A reporter interviews Dr. Susan Calvin, former robopsychologist of the company U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men. She tells him about her life’s work and the many situations she encountered with robots.